Friday, August 05, 2005

A Suggestion

Yesterday I endorsed Craig Murray's call for sanctions to be imposed on Uzbek cotton as a way of putting pressure on the regime of Islam Karimov, but ended my post with an admission that I had little or no idea how to go about campaigning for this. Having slept on it I have a suggestion. For it to work, however, I'm going to need some help. In fact, I'm going to need a lot of help.

Blogging is potentially a powerful way of disseminating ideas. Unfortunately with so many blogs out there it is easy for things to get lost. One approach used by activist bloggers has been to call days of action where they encourage supporters to write about the issue on a given day (see e.g. this campaign for the release of two Iranian bloggers arrested for what they wrote on their blogs). My suggestion is that we (this is where you come in) try something similar: September 1 is Uzbekistan's Independence Day. On that day the idea would be to have as many people as possible blogging on the realities of life in the country and calling for the imposition of sanctions on Uzbek cotton.

Like I say, for this to work it would to need the support of other people. Lots of them. If people think it's a good idea and would be interested in participating I'd appreciate it if they could post a comment below or email me (beware the spamfilter; remove the @ from the beginning of the address). If people think it's a bad idea, again I'd appreciate them saying so now. There's no point in doing this if it's all going to go tits-up. September 1 is just under a month away. We need to decide ASAP if we're actually going to do this. I obviously think it's worth trying, but others may have a different opinion.